


Helping Hand

by i_write_a_lot



Category: Captain America - All Media Types, Other - Fandom, The Avengers
Genre: Family, Friendship, Gen, Hiding, Hurt/Comfort, Monsters, Movie Night, Nightmares, Other - Freeform, Team, bad memories, light humor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-25
Updated: 2014-06-25
Packaged: 2018-02-06 05:05:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,124
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1845343
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/i_write_a_lot/pseuds/i_write_a_lot
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Natasha, after falling asleep during some downtime with her team, has bad dreams and hides. In steps Sam Wilson.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Helping Hand

**Author's Note:**

> -I do not own Avengers, Captain America, or any of the associates mentioned. 
> 
> -Written purely for my own amusement, no profit is gained through writing/posting this fic. 
> 
> -Kudos and Comments are much appreciated. Thank you for reading.

She was rocking back and forth underneath a set of stairs.

The dreams had been…bad. 

Bad enough that she only caught flashes of what she’d dreamed about, and they were stuck to her mind like the best kind of glue imaginable. She couldn’t shake the dream away, which were actually more of the bad memories of the past. She couldn’t realize that she’d just stabbed her best partner Hawkeye in the arm with one of her knives, knocked Tony across the room, and then promptly dashed out of there as fast as she could, all the while thinking-

_hide, hide, gotta hide, gotta be alone, please-_

She was still thinking these thoughts even when someone was coming near. At first, she didn’t recognize who it was, but slowly the bad dream receeded, and she realized what she had done. She felt horrified by how she’d nearly killed two of her teammates, and knew that they wouldn’t want her back there. 

Not after what she’d done. 

Her hands had blood on them, and not in just the literal sense. 

“Hey,” A man’s voice said softly, as she was sniffling back tears. She couldn’t remember when she’d started crying, when she’d become this weak pathetic thing that was hiding in a dark corner. She was stronger than that, she knew she was. 

But she couldn’t seem to just stop…

“Hey, are you okay in there?” Sam, she realized. It was Sam Wilson, a friend of Steve’s. He didn’t know what had happened, didn’t realize the danger that he was in. She wasn’t sure she was still herself, or if she was just the young kid who was terrified of everything, needing to get away-

“Hey, come on, you can trust me. I promise that I won’t hurt you,” Sam said softly, and she sniffled, wiping her eyes on her jacket. Her hands itched, and she felt suddenly exhausted from all that had occurred. She wondered if it was because she was getting old, or if she was just that out of shape. She used to be able to sit like this for hours…

“Please? Won’t you tell me what’s wrong? I won’t judge,” Sam said, and she could sense the smile in his voice. 

“I don’t know,” She whispered, honestly. She didn’t feel like talking. She jjust wanted to sit and cry. She didn’t know what had set her off, why she’d had the dreams at all. 

She’d not had bad dreams like that in a long while, but she knew she should’ve been prepared for them. 

They always came back.

“Well, that’s fine. I don’t know how I wound up here, myself, some days,” Sam sounded amiable, as though he was just talking to a regular normal person, and not a monster like her. She wondered why he hung out with them all the time. Didn’t he realize that he was staying with a bunch of ticking time bombs? The only exceptions were probably Darcy and Jane…maybe he was just as crazy as they were?

“Come on, at least come out where I can see you, please? I don’t like staring into darkness,” Sam sounded honest, and it was that honesty that-despite her hesitancy-made her slowly crawl out from behind the stairs. 

If Sam was shocked by the sight of blood on her hands, he didn’t react. Instead, he just smiled as though everything was absolutely perfect. 

“See? Isn’t this better? We can see one another now,” He said triumphantly. 

“I could see you fine before,” She muttered, looking down at the floor. She was surprised that with how off-balance she was, and the memories still slightly at the forefront of her mind, that she wasn’t speaking in Russian, let alone any of the other languages that she knew. Maybe she wasn’t as gone as she thought, or maybe she was starting to realize where she was and who she was again…

“Let’s go and see the team. I was going to ask about a potential upcoming party where we all hang out together…I know how Thor loves parties, and figured it was time for another one. It’s been a couple of months,” Sam talked a lot while he escorted her calmly and nicely up to the living area. She felt nervous about rejoining her team, sure that they were going to kick her out of the tower, send her packing back to Shield or elsewhere…

Sam opened the door, and she heard Jarvis say clearly, 

“Sir, I have located Agent Romanov.”

“Yeah, thanks, Jarvis, I can see that,” Tony said irritatedly. “Seriously, I’m gonna fix you so that you can tell me long before they open the door.” 

She saw that Tony had a bandage across his head, and Hawkeye was sitting on the sofa, looking as though he wanted to go out and hunt her down. He had a bandage wrapped around his arm, probably in thanks to Dr. Banner-whom she was surprised hadn’t Hulked out. 

“Ooh, you poor thing!” Jane was immediately coming up to her side, along with Darcy and Pepper. “Are you okay? Sam, thanks so much for finding her, we thought she’d left the tower, though Jarvis wasn’t sure…”

“It’s no trouble,” Sam said, reassuring her, as he kept close to Natasha. She was lead towards the kitchen area, where Steve was already getting some hot water, and Bucky was grabbing some clean clothes to help clean the blood off of her hands. “Seriously, I’m glad I found her.”

Natasha was cleaned by both Steve and Bucky, both of whom were quiet and obviously concerned about what she’d gone through. She wondered how they were taking it, how they could possibly want her in the same room, how-

“-staying for the night?” Tony was talking, and she realized that she had zoned out. 

“If you don’t mind. I think it might be a good idea. I seem to have a knack for finding assassins,” Sam said, wryly. 

Tony laughed, and so did the others. 

“Are you okay, Natasha?” Jane asked earnestly, while Darcy was giving her a bar of chocolate. 

“Eat this. In the Harry Potter books, chocolate always makes one feel better, and I agree with those words of wisdom from Remus.” Darcy insisted. 

Natasha took the chocolate rather numbly, and began to munch on it. Surprisingly, as she did, she felt some better about half-way through the bar of chocolate. Bucky spoke, his voice soft and gentle, the usual seriousness gone. 

“Are you alright?”

She considered, and nodded. She wasn’t ready to start talking, not yet. But she knew that they would understand, and help her through it. 

Whatever it was that had caused her to need a helping hand to begin with.  
~*~

End


End file.
